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I’ve been most neglectful of this blog, I shall blame it on being distracted and do my best to catch up on correspondence now I have a bit of holiday time.

The Myerscough T lawn

The T lawn at Myerscough College has almost fully filled its honoured spot in the middle of the kitchen garden and has had its first mowing courtesy of our resident gardener Sam. I am always interested to see how someone responds to taking a mower to a flowering T lawn and Sam it seems is a natural. Without hesitation and with only one tweak on the height of the mower he boldly took the blade to the lawn – and did a fine job.

I thought I’d show the T lawn prior to being shorn of flowers!

Myerscough T lawn close-up

I was charmed by the first blue bells of Campanula rotundifolia. Alas, they were removed by the mower. Not to worry though, they’ll be back – although I’m not sure when that might be, they seem to grow a bit slower here in Lancashire than they did in Berkshire and I suspect a second flush might not happen. It is inevitable that T lawns will be products of their environment. I have noticed it does seem to be a bit cooler and somewhat wetter here in Lancashire than in the south of England.

Myerscough t lawn close-up 2

The blue flowers in this image come from a type of Lobelia erinus, the hanging basket type I suspect. The central circle of the kitchen garden where the T lawn is, has been used for many different planting schemes in the past. A result of that and the planting format used for this particular lawn, has been that plants from previous uses have been popping up all over the place. The mower was able to deal with any of the taller plants – we had quite a lot of sow thistle (Sonchus oleraceus) and borage (Borago officinalis)!

I noted previously that in the experimental lawns at Reading that basket lobelia would also sometimes pop up (goodness knows where from). It is an annual that seems to do surprisingly well. I haven’t considered annuals much due to the perennial nature of lawns, perhaps I should.